


Though your promise count for nothing (you must keep it nonetheless)

by AnnieTheMouse



Series: le déserteur [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, Finding Purpose, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Exile, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieTheMouse/pseuds/AnnieTheMouse
Summary: Booker's made it to the other side of exile.  He's learned a lot, he's grown a lot, and for the first time in his immortal years, he's actually lived a lot.   It doesn't make it perfect.  It doesn't fix everything.  But at the end of it all, they're family. And he may be broken, but he still loves them.Maybe with family he can truly learn how to stand on his own.  Keep his promise to them - and himself.(Path 1)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: le déserteur [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944298
Comments: 18
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can see two ways that the story (or at least my story) of exile for Booker can continue (well, perhaps more than two, but two that I have it in me to write). This is the first path. Path 1 Sequel to That Would be Enough.
> 
> Title (and to be honest parts of the summary) shamelessly stolen from Leonard Cohen's Heart With No Companion.
> 
> _Now I greet you from the other side  
>  Of sorrow and despair  
> With a love so vast and shattered  
> It will reach you everywhere_

Of all the things he had expected to happen on his return, it wasn’t bonding with the woman who’d killed him repeatedly, who’d died in his mind innumerable times before that. But the truth of the matter is, he still has nightmares. Oh, fewer than before, not to the state of that near constant sleep deprivation, but finding your way back doesn’t mean all your ghosts are gone.

What he’s surprised to find is that he’s more or less alone at first. 

Nile seems to have kept that sleep anywhere marine skill, one he frankly envies. And honestly, it’s not that Joe and Nicky ever appeared outside of their room at night, their nightmares shared with each other, so that’s not a change. 

Andy though used to show up often, still shaken up from whatever stalked her dreams. He’d always assumed it was the same as his own, from a different perspective, and the fact that she doesn’t show at night now that Quyhn is back he figures confirms it.

Harder for that ghost to take you over when you’re wrapped around the real thing.

It’s why it’s extra surprising, after one night where his family dies in his dream, that he turns around after getting a drink of water to find Quyhn in the kitchen doorway. He jumps, a little. Tells himself it’s the fact that his heart rate is still up from the nightmare still working on him. Tells himself it’s the surprise and not the fact that part of him is on edge around her still. 

Not that avoiding being on edge with her is easily dampened with her just staring at him, quietly, dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight that filters through the window.

“Can’t sleep?” He finally asks, and she nods.

“I’ve slept enough” she says, and … well. He can’t argue with that. For one, he doubts she’d admit to nightmares, least of all to him. Second, he can imagine that being trapped, missing so much, would make sleep less more appealing. 

She walks into the living room, and he follows, uncertain, before sitting on the couch. She sits beside him, leaned against his side, body surprisingly warm - a line of heat that seems to start to chase the last of the chill of his nightmare away. Her breathing is slow and steady, and unconsciously he feels himself syncing up.

She doesn’t say a thing. Neither does he. It’s still enough.

It starts happening more and more, when his nightmares raise their fanged heads again. But it’s not just nightmares now. When they find a man they were meant to help lynched, rope tight around his neck, when Booker after feels it’s hard to breathe, feels the coarseness of rope at his throat, she’s there.

One time, in the dark, after sipping from his flask does not quiet the hum in his brain, he finally has to ask. “Is this because you killed me …” he pauses, trying to think back.

“Twenty-three” she fills in. He’d lost count, but he took her word for it.

“Twenty three times?” He completes, some part of his brain far too amused at the fact that they’re having this conversation. 

“No.” She tells him, and he doesn’t expect any further answer.

She surprises him. But then Quyhn has done nothing but surprise him since she first showed up in his apartment. As her head leans against his shoulder, he realizes he’s quite happy with her always surprising him. For as long as he has.

“You kept me from drifting as long as you could” she tells him. “Before there was nothing left you could keep.” The eyes that look up at him hold no fear for him anymore, only an understanding for another broken soul. 

“Only seems fair to return the favour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'd mentioned at the end of That would be enough, I could see two paths to continue on my story, (well, two paths that aren't dark paths and I can only write dark paths in very short snippets for my own sanity), so ... both I guess? I am so indecisive. Your own choose your own adventure.
> 
> I also debated heavily between this title or 'so vast and shattered' but went with longwinded.
> 
> This path is likely to be the much more introspective of the two, as it's really about Booker finding his own strength.


	2. Chapter 2

He knew, long before he returned, that Joe, that Nicky, that JoeandNicky … well.

That there was the damage done that was the worst. And it didn’t matter intentions, and it didn’t matter his pain. They had gotten the brunt of the horror that he’d caused. And unlike Andy, he could not claim any altruism there.

He’d thought they’d be fine on their own. He’d thought a lot of stupid things.

He’d been so, so surprised when Nicky had professed to still loving him so soon after his return. He’d never expected more than acceptance from them on his return. Love seemed too much to hope for. “Love is not balanced on a scale against your penance” Nicky scolds him, softly, when he can’t help but comment. You can love things even if they hurt you goes unsaid.

They don’t return to what they had before though. And not just because they know he is not as steady, as sound, as they’d thought him to be before, never noticing how badly he was hurting underneath. Not just because he hurt them, deeply and desperately, giving rise to new fears about dangers they hadn’t seen lurking, of modern science and technology and all it could wound them with.

But beyond these things, it’s because what they had before was a lie. Not the friendship, not the family, but hiding the envy and the willing ignorance that had lain underneath.

“It hurt more than the scalpel” Joe tells him once, voice still harder than Booker remembers and its not condemnation, it’s just the truth. They have forgiven, somehow they have forgiven enough for him to be here, but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten.

He promises them, when he realizes that they truly want him to return early, that he will never forget what he’s done, and though he’ll never make it right he’ll do everything he could to make sure it never happens again. Not just by his hand, but by anyone’s. 

He promises it to all of them, but it’s Joe and Nicky that his eyes can’t help but focus on.

And if they cannot forget, well, neither can he. No one probably should. It makes them more wary, but it also makes them more considerate. It decreases the assumptions - both good and bad. Assumptions that they are all on the same page. Instead they’re now watching out for the others, watching for the pain points. 

He sees how they react to Nile, sees the watch, the care, and he hates that he led to the caution but he’s glad, very glad, that they saw her more clearly. That she obviously had the support he didn’t when dealing with his family. Not just from what he was sending, anonymously, from his place in Chicago - but also from the others.

So they learn from their mistakes, and build a new foundation. It still has some of the same elements, (definitely the football) but it’s new. Both for them, and for the new team. Quyhn had lashed out not just at him before they’d found a way forward, he knows. And Nile is strong-willed, so stronger then he has been when he joined so they’re still finding her place as well.

They move forward. All of them, and Booker and his brothers within that. Booker feels a little part of his soul heal every time he sees it. He truly hopes they both feel the same.

The fact that it’s still a both, a them, well there’s still a little twinge of envy, he can’t lie. But it’s wistful vs poisoned, and he thinks that’ll be just fine.

As he tucks a blanket over them one night where they’ve fallen asleep on the couch, so wrapped together he doesn’t know where the line between them could be drawn, trusting him at their back, over their sleeping bodies once more - which later he’ll realize has been a vulnerability years in the making even after his return - well, once he feels free to do that, he is pretty sure that they think it’ll be fine too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When it comes down to it he betrayed them all, but it's the Joe & Nicky thing that is the worst outcome, even worse than hurting Andy physically.
> 
> Even if things get better between them, there's no way this won't change how they are together, how they are with new immortals - for good, and for bad.


	3. Chapter 3

Andy is the hardest and easiest to deal with after his return.

It’s partially because he knows she understands him, even though they’re both more or less on the other side of it now.

Watching her with Nile is a revelation. For all their differences, they are so similar that it almost shakes him. Because Nile is so strong, so determined, that it reminds him of Andy - but if Andy had been hopeful. If Andy hadn’t been lost.

He wonders if that was the Andy that Joe and Nicky had first met, if that drove them on where he only could see ruin. 

He knows without asking it’s not the same as the Andy of now, not even with her beloved back by her side. There’s something a little broken in Andy still, and always will be. It’s why she’s the easiest and hardest both. There is far too much familiarity in that.

“You always got me, Book.” she confesses, one night, when the blood that splatters across her skin came a little too close to home. “Even if I didn’t quite get just how well.” Until it was too late, goes unsaid.

But Andy had always had an outlet in death and war and stopping those who brought it to bear on the unprotected. Even at her worst, even when she had nothing else, that seemed to keep her going. Hollowly, painfully enough he’d wanted her freedom along with his own (had used that as an excuse when he faltered) but still she'd persevered. Even when she'd asked for a break, he’d been able to call her back with a case, a cause after all. 

He'd wondered if that, too, was because of her loss. But then he watches Quyhn and her while fighting, at each other’s back, so fluid even with how much they’ve been torn apart, and he feels that no. Maybe how much she threw herself into it, but this outlet had been theirs long before it all went wrong.

For Booker, well, sometime he wonders if he was really made for this, this endless war. He’d tried forging, tried hacking, tried every support role he could think of to keep him on the edges, because he’d never felt as right on the battlefield as Andy looked with her axe in her hands.

Oh, it wasn’t that he wasn’t good at it. They’d have called him on the drinking long before if he wasn’t able to keep up his end when the time came. He knows the Booker that exists now is nothing like the Sebastien of before. He is fluid on the battlefield, deadlier than most, satisfied by his own competence. You can be good at anything with enough practice, and with enough support, and with enough desperation to not be alone.

And with enough high class bastards thrown in your way for practice.

He’d thought it a failing though, in the before, that although his body was there his heart was not. But after returning, seeing what could be done with the support roles when Copley had done it, when his successor Sarin had done it, he realizes he’d been not choosing either path, and failing his team with both because of it.

He’d deserted his first war, and he’s not sure if his heart had ever not been running from the battlefield even as his body killed and died with the others. 

He’s not sure what will make sense, which path will keep him happy over the years, but he watches Nile have Joe’s back while Nicky is in his sniper perch, sees Nicky find a balance between a role at the centre of the battlefield and his perch high above, and realizes for the first time truly that he has options beyond a gun in his hand always, or running away always.

There is a balance he’d never thought to try and find. To be honest, he doubted he’d have had the patience with it before. But as he sits with Sarin, as they plan together, he starts to see the possibilities.

Even more than that, he starts to like the possibilities.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not perfect, and it’s not easy, even all these years later. Finding his way with his family, on a team, in his own head. 

There is a moment, not long after he returns, where he and his family are safe, and they’re happy, and they’re laughing, and it’s so much like home that suddenly Booker hates himself so much that he can’t breathe. He understands where Joe’s anger, Andy’s disappointment came from because he risked all this.

He hates himself so fiercely, and then as quickly as that, he realizes that that’s always been the problem. His hatred of himself, at its base, led to his betrayal. Sometimes he thinks he’s always hated himself, maybe even before his son screamed at him on his deathbed, and that just made it real. The sadness overwhelmed.

He knows what it is now, in these modern days where such things are discussed, diagnosed. And he knows there is no cure for what he has. He is sure as time goes on there may be, but he can’t live on maybes. He can’t risk his family on maybes. 

Probably the biggest thing he’s learned, to be honest. The fact that he learned it mostly with people who had no clue he would live long past them, with a woman who had no clue he was there to watch over her, well, 

He kind of wonders if Copley, and now Sarin, helped with that for the rest of the team. Some true connection to time and the ravages. Some connection to mortality, and the type of people they fight for.

Either that or it’s been Nile, and all Freeman women are just utterly remarkable.

Either way they’re more anchored now, more in tune with the world, more prepared even as decades continue to pass and the world continues to change in ways confusing and also strangely familiar.

They’re here, not just existing - he’s here, not just existing - and it’s making a difference in many ways.

They’re family. He’d been willing to risk this family in the memory of his first, as if they didn’t mean as much, as if they weren’t worth enough. It is without a doubt the worst thing he will ever do. 

Because no this family is not of his blood, but they are his now. He may not have chosen them the first time, but when he returned from his exile, early, willingly, he knew he was making that choice now.

They will never replace the one he lost but he knows now that’s not the point of this. They are too important to replace. Too important to desert. He’s not sure how to tell them that, how he now sees it, but he does.

And then one night he gasps himself awake, his head pounding from the ricochet of his skull off pavement.

No. Not his skull. Anothers.

They gather in the dark, words rattling off, Joe's pencil dancing across the paper. Eyes, dark and scared. Running, so hard your chest is aching. Falling - pushed, and a long sudden drop until nothing. Until everything.

“I felt him die” Nile says, and she’s shaken, but in the very next breath she’s pushing on. “One of us has to go get them.”

Booker nods, at first, but the does more than nod.

“I’ll go, boss.” He says. His heart is still pounding, like he’s been running. Like they were running. He’s so damn sick of running. And as he breathes deeply, he realizes he doesn’t have to. And that maybe he can give someone else that opportunity, that freedom, too. The promise of a new life.

More than that, he genuinely wants to.

“It should be me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Path 1: Where Booker finds himself - is a short one, probably because of how introspective it ended up being. But I like the idea of Booker finding his way back and finding a path internally through the noise in his head - not 'fixed', but understanding where the cracks are and stronger because of it - both Booker being stronger, and the team being stronger. Kintsugi for the soul, as it were.
> 
> Path 2 is coming soon though, which is the other approach to finding your place. You can end here, or continue on to see what's through the other door, either way I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
